I think Gibson stories are my main reread, partly because I think they work a little better when you already half remember what’s going on.

I also reread the Murderbot books quite often, they’re kind of comfort food stories for me.

I rewatch Cowboy Bebop sometimes for the same reason.

I reread the webcomic Black & Blue fairly often but that’s mostly because the person making it has been absolutely hammering out pages for years now and I almost always need to reread before I can catch up.

Sorry I’m late! I think I’ve made pretty good progress so far on the campaign - I’ve been spending most of my writing time on organizing the document, moving sections around, and getting the layout right. I’ve had some good suggestions on section additions from Andrew Gross, such as creating an Adversaries and Escalations subsection for each major part of the campaign. These consolidates information on the people who will (or might) try to interfere with the players’ investigation. Previously that information was sort of scattered across locations, character profiles, and assorted scenes. Getting it all in one place for each potential adversary and making their motives clear has felt good.

I’ve also continued running the second playthrough, and have had a great time making it a more cloak-and-dagger campaign for this investigator-heavy group of players. They uncovered the cold case murder mystery at the heart of the conspiracy to stop them much earlier than the first group, and there’s been some tense scenes even though I’ve been striving to avoiding any outright combat because I don’t think it fits this group.

This has been really helpful in planning and describing other ways the campaign can go, and TBH proving that the open world sandbox design is fairly solid! My goal was to make sure there was enough information, locations, and opportunities that you could spin a decent adventure out of it no matter how the players decided to pursue their investigation, and it feels like we’re pretty close to that! In terms of writing all this info into the guidebook, I’m trying to hit a balance between making the information available and not driving myself insane trying to write a choose-your-own adventure book. I’m recognizing that once they get to the main location, basically all bets are off and I’m making sure that any overarching plot and adversary tactics read as branching suggestions from that point forward.

I’ve also been working on adding additional Non Player Character profiles though there’s still a handfull left to make.

Boss makes a dollar…

That’s awesome! I’ve enjoyed the stuff you’ve shared on Mastodon

I think things are going to get a good deal worse in the next few years, but also that the old systems crumbling could make space for something better. But if we want better things to grow, people will need hope and roadmaps. They need to know that things could be done differently and those solutions have to feel reasonable. And I think that’s where solarpunk media comes in.

I think fiction has an incredible ability to make these potential realities feel familiar and comfortable and attainable, to wear off all the rough edges and propaganda. Solarpunk settings can help people tour their options, and see what library economies, public transit-heavy cities, and robust systems of support and mutual aid look and feel like, how they might work (and problems that might arise and how they could be solved). So when someone starts trying to scare them about the dangers of socialism or anarchy they already know better because, in a way, they’ve been there.

When I work on solarpunk art, write solarpunk fiction, my research is mostly around rebuilding. What practices, technologies, infrastructures make sense for a society that’s trying to rebuild better. My hope is that we can speak to this generation and the ones that follow it, provide big dreams and suggestions on techniques, and hope they’ll recognize opportunities to improve things when they see them.

I think there’s still plenty of spots for nuanced discussions on the net (including this instance), but you probably won’t have much luck finding them in communities dedicated to posting memes.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect absurd qualifications for an absurd salary, let alone a broad understanding of the basics of his industry.

The genre name might not be common knowledge (and I’m not sure that’s the case) but cyberpunk aesthetics and themes and plot points have infiltrated so much of modern science fiction that cyberpunk communities frequently have trouble drawing a line around genre works vs mainstream scifi. And this is after companies and brand marketing “picked it too early” and made it a joke in the 90s. It just sort of kept going quietly, looked more and more prescient, and in the end, it had suffused through so many imaginations and works that it kind of was the mainstream.

I’m not sure the same thing will happen with solarpunk but given the way cyberpunk seems to have acclimatized us to our current distopia, I sort of hope solarpunk can do something similar. Maybe wear the rough edges and propaganda fears off building a society that actually looks out for its people and the habitats they live in.

Hi! I’m not sure I see the link but I’d love to check it out! (The post title just links to the image)

The Behind the Bastards episodes on him were really good. As someone who once read his comic daily I also took some reassurance from the fact that he had an open suggestion line and was essentially publishing croudsourced jokes submitted by a large portion of the tech sector for a long part of Dilbert’s run.

Same, similar context to ‘bleeding hearts’ (edit: just reread the post and saw this was already mentioned)

We get this in my hometown - people see the place, decide they want to live in the forest. They clearcut a chunk of it and build their house. Then when a bear wanders into their new yard (following the same territory it always has) they call the cops.

Between the massive corporate wealth at stake and the millions of people literally addicted to the product, it’s hard now to imagine governments being able to ban them (and I lived through it).

Or paint it red so it can go faster. With enough boyz inside all believing as hard as they can, that thing should be zipping around the galaxy. Don’t have to be sneaky if you’re fast.

https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-244-fine-art-and-meat-cleavers/

That’s kinda what I was thinking, yeah.

That’s interesting - this is the first I’m hearing of them doing that to jets.

This isn’t the original, but I took the photo and cleaned it up a bit:

This is really cool! I’d always thought this was done with molten gold, I had no idea that it was mostly done with resins. I might give this a try someday.

I’m thinking about it - I have access to a laser cutter that can do steel etching. If I planned it carefully I could get it to match to inches between the points of the jaws to each tick or something. But I think I’m leaning towards leaving it origional-ish for now, since this setup still allows you to open and close them without losing your place, so you can measure the opening accurately and that’s probably how they’ll be used.